The Field Hospital at Dawn

Dr. Sarah Chen arrived at the makeshift clinic outside Port-au-Prince three days after the earthquake. She had imagined herself ready. She was not.

The scale of suffering — rows of patients on cots stretching beyond the tent walls into open air, the cries of children, the smell of antiseptic failing to mask deeper wounds — dropped her to her knees just inside the entrance. She crouched there, medical bag clutched to her chest, paralyzed. "I'm not enough for this," she whispered.

A Haitian nurse named Marie knelt beside her. Without a word, Marie took Sarah's trembling hands, cleaned them with iodine, and pressed a stethoscope into her palm. "None of us are enough," Marie said quietly. "But you are here. And they need you. Go."

Isaiah knew this moment. When the temple filled with smoke and the seraphim shook the doorposts with their cry of "Holy, holy, holy," the prophet did not stand tall. He crumbled. "Woe is me! I am ruined." The holiness of the Almighty did not make Isaiah feel capable — it made him feel undone.

But God did not leave him in that ruin. A burning coal touched his lips. His guilt was taken away. And then came the voice: "Whom shall I send?"

Isaiah's answer was not born from confidence. It was born from cleansing. "Here am I. Send me."

We are never ready enough for what God asks. But He does not send us as we are — He purifies us first, then calls us forward.